U.S. forces in Iraq are operating regularly outside the wire to provide medical evacuation support for Kurdish troops fighting Islamic State militants, according to Kurdish and U.S. officials.

"Every time we go to a fight, they bring a helicopter for our guys to evacuate them," Lahur Talabani, a Kurdish intelligence official, said Nov. 6, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Friday that the medevac missions are led by Iraqis and use Iraqi aircraft, but American troops accompany them to forward logistics posts and pickup sites near the frontline fighters.

"We are advising on that ... not necessarily advising with the helicopter piece of it, but certainly, as casualties come back, there'll be an adviser there to help the peshmerga medics conduct casualty collection and operations," said Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve.

The latest American-backed medevac support mission was underway Friday near the Iraqi town of Sinjar along a key road connecting the Islamic State hubs of Mosul and Raqqa. With a battle for Sinjar underway, a team of U.S. advisers was working alongside Kurds at a forward operating position near the front lines.

Warren emphasized that the medevac mission near Sinjar was led by Iraqi security forces. The Iraqis provided the helicopters and conducted five medevac missions for the operation this week, he said.

The medevac support locations are a safe distance from the combat operations, Warren said.

"You do your casualty collection, you know, behind the lines where it's safe. ... That's where those advisers are," Warren said.

Providing U.S. forces to support medevac missions is not unusual, he added. "You have to be there to advise," he said.

About 3,500 U.S troops are deployed to Iraq. Current White House policy is to keep them out of combat operations and limit their activities to support missions.

For the initial months of the train-advise-and-assist mission in Iraq that began in September 2014, U.S. troops were almost entirely confined to one of the secure military headquarters facilities or training bases, defense officials said.

Yet Pentagon officials have signaled a new willingness to be more aggressive in supporting Iraqi and Kurdish operations against the Islamic State group.

For example, on Oct. 22 the U.S. sent several helicopters and a team of about 30 U.S. Special Forces soldiers to join Kurdish peshmerga troops on a raid on the village of Hawija in Islamic State-held territory. The raid freed dozens of hostages who were facing imminent execution, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. troops were drawn into the firefight in Hawija, leading to the death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the first American service member killed in combat in Iraq since 2011.

Talabani said Nov. 6 that the operation in Hawija was the first in which the U.S. provided the Kurds with direct helicopter support for missions other than medevac.

"Whenever I asked for helicopters, they said that the U.S. said it was not allowed to ... only for medevac," Talabani said. "This [Oct. 22 operation in Hawija] was the first time in Iraq that they were allowed to use their helicopters."

About Andrew Tilghman

Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.

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